A little background: The United States was attacked by a radical organization, not a government. There is nobody to stand on the deck of a ship and sign surrender papers. There is no "winning the war" where everybody goes back to their normal lives.

In the radical's own written manifesto, the attack was primarily because we had Americans on Saudi soil, supporting the U.N.'s No Fly mission.

For this crime, and other imaginary crimes, they attacked and destroyed part of an American city, deliberately selecting civilians as their preferred targets, and would have done more if they could have.

They declared this war, and carried out a first strike.

Now we, Republicans and Democrats, are attacking members of this group who are still carrying out this war, including some that actually planned or organized past attacks.

If you were actually thinking the ethics through, the correct question to ask would be:

"would it be okay for China to use a drone to take out someone who had blown up major buildings in Shanghai and Beijing and killed thousands of Chinese citizens?"

Of course, in the real world, this question would never come up, because the United States (or any other civilized nation), would immediately arrest the bastard and ship him back to China instead of hiding him somewhere in Kansas and supporting him.